For those of you who always wondered, "What if Doctor Who did its own version of a Black Mirror episode?" your prayers have been answered. This week the Doctor and Ruby take a back seat to the adventures of Lindsy Pepper-Bean, a thouroughly unlikeable character that displays some shocking behavior.
Lindsy is a member of the Fine Time colony (inspired by New Order?) in the far future, a group of exclusive spoiled rich kids from the Homeworld who exist in a technological cocoon. The "dot" of the story is the tiny portable hard drive they all carry that powers the "bubble", a circular screen of all their friends, talking in live time, that completely covers their heads. They have grown such a dependence on the technology they can't bear to have it turned off (Lindsy at one point complains that she has forgotten how to walk without the tech providing arrows for her to follow.)
The Doctor and Ruby find their way into Lindsy's bubble and attempt to warn her of the danger surround her: slug-like monsters are eating her friends, but no one seems to notice or care. After some severe prodding and a lot of petulant resistance on Lindsy's part, she realizes the danger and tries to escape.
Lots of dark, dark satire here, with a society so sated by tech they can't even look up when someone next to them is being eaten alive. It's pretty hilarious that their society is being destroyed by slugs, one of the slowest-moving creatures in existence. What's less funny is how the episode resolves. Stop reading if you don't want spoilers.
Lindsy finally manages to find the path to the river to exit the city, and the Doctor and Rose are waiting there. The Doctor knows the humans leaving the colony have no survival skills and will be killed by the environment. He offers to save them all and transport them to whatever planet they want. They consider this offer.... then laugh and ridicule him, saying that people like them listening to someone like him in real life could never happen. They dismiss the idea of his time machine as laughable and happily march off to their certain doom, laughing at him all the way.
The Doctor doesn't know how to process this. He laughs, then stops himself and starts screaming. It's a great acting turn from Ncuti Gatwa, who up to this point has not been forced to show this side of the Doctor: utter disbelief. We as a viewer don't care about Lindsy, because she's a backstabbing, spoiled rotten brat, but the Doctor sincerely doesn't care about that. He tells her, "It doesn't matter if you hate me, let me save you." But that's not going to happen this time.
The show keeps getting better, week by week, and this is a great example of it firing on all cylinders. To my knowledge the show has never featured an antihero like Lindsy as a main character, and the newness of it is refreshing. It's also got a very, very dark edge for a show aired on Disney. This one is something special. My rating: A+
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